Design for Service

Experigrams

In 1992, Gérard Tocquer wrote a book called Service Marketing: A Relational Approach. In it, he introduced the concept of “experigrams.” The idea was to add an emotional dimension to service blueprints, which were primarily an operational tool at the time. That seemed like an intriguing concept.

The book was written in French, so it’s taken me a while to track it down and cobble together a basic translation of the section on experigrams. (I don’t speak French, by the way, so if you can help clarify the translation the relevant pages are here and here.)

Experigrams never moved beyond the initial stages as a tool for service design, but they’re an important early example of the development of customerjourneymaps and the transition between service design and experience design. The example from Tocquer’s book [figure 5.8] concerns the customer experience at a ski resort. There’s also a rough Powerpoint from 1990 showing how the experigram might be applied to a hotel.

What matters here is not so much the execution as the concept: matching emotional cues to touchpoints throughout the customer journey. That deserves to be explored in more detail.

This is a very nifty tool. Very similar to the approach I have been using on client projects for a few years now, but it’s good to see another take on it.
I like the way the observations and the roles are divided up with the operational process stage.